Through the squalls and storms of the past few months, no one has been more doggedly upbeat about President Clinton's ambitious plan for national health care reform than senior adviser Ira Magaziner and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. Magaziner, chief architect of Clinton's health care plan, took great delight in calling attention to his office bookshelves.

“Is it really that interesting when a 66-year-old woman becomes a grandmother?” That's the question my colleague and friend Robin Abcarian rhetorically posed in her column Friday as she recounted listening, disbelievingly, to someone in the media actually suggest that Hillary Rodham Clinton's impending grandmotherhood might have an effect on her possible presidential campaign. (The offending media person was New York Times financial columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin. His fellow panelists on MSNBC's “Morning Joe” were as aghast as Abcarian.)

Re "Stellar, but short of spectacular," Jan. 28 Being of the opinion that Hillary Rodham Clinton is among the best secretaries of State, I was completely taken aback by the article's finding that although she is very well thought of by the American public and the president, many so-called foreign policy experts don't think too highly of her performance. Why should anyone pay attention to what these "experts" think? It happens that she has been dealing with many difficult and diverse problems, and she has come through very well.

In the circus of speculation that surrounds Hillary Rodham Clinton and her presidential prospects, Chelsea Clinton dropped a bombshell Thursday with her announcement that she and husband Marc Mezvinsky are expecting a child. The former secretary of State has made no secret of her desire to be a grandmother, and sources close to her have said she would have serious reservations about diving into the grueling schedule of a presidential campaign if those demands coincide with her daughter's pregnancy.

Of all the acts of executive clemency that President Clinton granted as he was leaving the White House, few strike as close to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton as her husband's decision to reduce the prison terms of four New York Hasidic Jews convicted of bilking tens of millions of dollars from the government. Sen. Clinton, New York's Democratic junior senator, has said that in general she was a bystander while President Clinton made his decisions on clemency.

The New York Times Magazine for this Sunday depicts former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton as a bizarre-looking planet, inspiring quite a range of reactions. The cover accompanies the story “Planet Hillary” by Amy Chozick, a look at the potential 2016 Democratic presidential front-runner. Clinton, who left her post at the State Department last year, has not confirmed that she will be revving up her second presidential campaign, though that hasn't stopped supporters from raising funds and preparing for the campaign.

The push to create more opportunities for women is the “great unfinished business of this century,” Hillary Clinton said Thursday, telling a Chicago audience that “when women participate in peacemaking and peacekeeping, we are safer and more secure, and when women participate in politics, the effects ripple throughout society.” Introducing his wife, former President Bill Clinton announced the former secretary of State would be working full-time...

LAS VEGAS - With a flash of comedic timing, Hillary Clinton dodged the first controversy of her not-yet-declared 2016 presidential run after a heckler threw a shoe and a nearly half-century-old political document at the former first lady and secretary of State during a speech here. Shortly after Clinton began a keynote speech Thursday night at an Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries convention, a woman walked down the aisle and threw the items. She then turned around, put her hands in the air and walked away as security officers took her into custody.

One of the organizations founded to prod Hillary Rodham Clinton to seek the White House in 2016 announced Thursday that it had raised more than $1.7 million in the first quarter of this year. All told, the Ready for Hillary "super PAC," one of several groups that are laying the groundwork for a potential Clinton campaign, has raised $5.8 million from more than 55,000 donors, nearly all of whom contributed $100 or less. While other pro-Clinton efforts are focused on deep-pocketed donors and building a rapid-response operation to counter Republican attacks on Clinton, Ready for Hillary is using the money to build a national voter data file, recruit volunteers and organize in early electoral states such as Iowa, where Clinton's loss in 2008 dealt a body blow to her first presidential bid. The group has limited donations to $25,000 and is collecting funds in a multitude of ways, including a gay and lesbian fundraiser Monday in West Hollywood that had the symbolic ticket cost of $20.16, a pricier lobbyist-hosted fundraiser in Washington this month and a direct-mail campaign.

It has been 22 years since a Clinton faced off against a Bush. Will it happen again in 2016? In the parlance of “Game of Thrones,” will House Clinton and House Bush vie for a return to power? There have been only six years since 1989 -- the Obama years -- when the American president's last name was not Clinton or Bush. And, during four of those six years, Hillary Rodham Clinton was prominent in the headlines as secretary of State. Bushes and Clintons have been permanent fixtures in the political landscape.

For decades, questions posed to Hillary Rodham Clinton have turned on the subject of hair. But for all the eyerolls, that famous coif - in all its scrunchie-to-bob iterations - has turned out to be a very helpful talking point. The occasion Thursday night was Tina Brown's “Women In the World” conference in New York, and it was New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman - introduced by Brown as a “sensitive man” - who asked the former secretary of State and her co-panelist, International Monetary Fund Chief Christine Lagarde, to reflect on whether there was “still a double standard in the media about how we talk about women in public life.” To laughter, Friedman recalled a news clip in which Clinton had said she'd flown all night to meet with a foreign leader and had tied her hair back - “and you said when you came into the room, he was really frightened,” Friedman said, “because he had heard that when your hair was back, you were going to deliver unpleasant news.” “Really, Tom?

Once again, Bill Clinton proved that being an ex-president, surrounded by the rosy glow of the past, beats being the current pilloried resident of the White House. A Wednesday night guest on comedian Jimmy Kimmel's late-night ABC show, Clinton was tight-lipped about his family's future political plans, leaving that to Hillary Rodham Clinton to eventually divulge, but embraced his 1992 moniker as the nation's “first black president” - and the actual first black president. “I loved being called the first black president, but Barack Obama really is,” Clinton told Kimmel, to laughs.

Two potential 2016 presidential rivals, Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton, did not quite share the stage at an education conference in Texas on Monday. But they both spoke about a common goal: expanding the accessibility and affordability of higher education at home and throughout the world. The former Florida governor, who organized the Dallas conference on the globalization of higher education with former North Carolina Gov. Jim Hunt, spoke only briefly Monday morning - serving in more of an emcee role introducing guests.

Michelle Obama, who has been an effective if tamped-down first lady, took her daughters and mother to China this week. The seven-day trip, which ends Wednesday, is not much different from other most traditional first lady trips, where highly choreographed appearances and interactions centering on the importance of education unfurl predictably. Obama's conversations and statements are friendly, inspirational and anodyne. The Obamas have also taken in the sights, and if you'd like to see what they have seen, you can read her official blog . Their itinerary includes the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace, the Great Wall and the Chengu Panda Base, home to dozens of the magical creatures.

March 21, 2014 | By Mary McNamara, Los Angeles Times Television Critic

Although it is an unapologetic celebration of its subject's remarkable life, Showtime's new documentary about Geraldine Ferraro is rimmed with sadness. Some of this is understandable enough. Ferraro died two years ago, after battling blood cancer for more than a decade. "Geraldine Ferraro: Paving the Way," which premieres Friday, is clearly a labor of love by her daughter, filmmaker Donna Zaccaro. But more than that is the "lest we forget" tone that infuses the documentary. In 1984, former vice president and Democratic nominee Walter Mondale's decision to name then Congresswoman Ferraro as his running mate was nothing short of revolutionary.